Breath of Scandal(7)

Gary's head snapped back. He sucked in a sharp breath. His caressing hand fell still beneath her pantyhose. "Jade?"

She was embarrassed, but resolutely kept her hand where it was instead of drawing it back. "Hmm?"

"You don't have to do that. What I mean is, I don't want you to think I expect it."

"I know. But I want to." Her palm applied more pressure.

Whispering her name repeatedly, he grappled with his belt buckle, a button, and his zipper, then tentatively guided her hand inside his trousers. Beneath his underwear his skin was hot. His shaft was hard. He folded her fingers around it. Jade was shocked by how big it was. She'd had indications, of course, but feeling an indistinct bulge against her belly through her clothes was far different from enclosing his fully extended sex with her hand.

While he kissed her fiercely, she bashfully explored his erection. Her hand made a sliding motion up and down that stopped his breath. He groaned her name and slipped his finger up between the fleshy lips of her sex.

The motion caused a friction unlike anything Jade had ever felt. She tilted her hips up, reaching for him, reaching for something that eluded her. Again he moved his finger. It was like being skimmed by Fourth of July sparklers. Her entire lower body tingled.

"Gary?" This was a marvelous discovery. She wanted to tell him about it, share it with him. "Gary?" Her hand closed tightly around his penis.

With a low, frustrated grow], Gary pulled away from her



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Sandra Brown



and sat up. He pushed her hand away from his lap. "Stop. If you don't, I'm going to make a mess."

"I don't care," she whispered.

"I do." Crossing his hands over the top of the steering wheel, he ground his forehead against his white knuckles. "Jade, I'm sick of this shit. I want to do it so bad."

The promising tingles that she had felt now blinked and went out. She regretted that. They had been stunning, breathtaking, almost scary, but she wished she could have found out what they led to. Was it an orgasm?

But her primary concern was for Gary, who she knew was far more frustrated than she. She moved closer to him and smoothed her hand over his head.

"I don't know which is worse," he said hoarsely, "not touching you at all, or touching you to this point, where I want you so much I hurt afl over."

"I think not touching at all would be much worse. For me anyway. "

"It would be hell for me, too. But we can't go on like this. "

"Then let's not."

He raised his head and looked at her. For several moments, his brown eyes searched her face. Then he lowered his gaze and shook his head regretfully. "We can't, Jade. You're the best thing I've got going for me. I can't ruin it. "

"Why would making love ruin it?" "What if you got pregnant?"

"I wouldn't. Not if we take precautions."

"You still could. Then our chances for getting out of this place," he jutted his chin toward the windshield, "would be shot to hell. I'd have to grow soybeans for Ivan Patchett, and you'd have to go to work in his goddamn factory. Everybody would say I had no better sense than my daddy, and they'd be right."

Because of the ever-growing number of little Parkers, the joke around town was that Gary's father, Otis, didn't know when to quit. That was just one of the stigmas that Gary was determined to shrug off.

Breath of scandal



21



He drew Jade against his chest and propped his chin on the top of her head. "We can't gamble away our chance to make a better life."

"Making love now doesn't necessarily mean that our futures are doomed to misery."

"It scares me to tempt fate, though. The only time I really feel good is when I'm with you, Jade. The rest of the time I feel so alone. That sounds crazy, doesn't it? How could I feel alone with six younger brothers and sisters in the house? But it's true.

"Sometimes I think I must have been a foundling, that I don't really belong to my parents. My daddy is resigned to fields that flood and crops that rot and selling his produce in a feudalistic town like Palmetto. He hates being poor and ignorant but doesn't do anything to help himself. He takes whatever shit Ivan Patchett shovels him and is glad to get it.

"Well, I'm poor, but I'm not ignorant. I'm sure as hell not cowed by the Patchetts. I'm not going to be like my daddy, accepting things as they are just because that's the way they've always been. I'm going to make something of myself.

"I know I can, Jade, if I've got you pulling for me. He took her hand and pressed her palm to his lips, leaving it there while he spoke. "But in the meantime, I'm so afraid of letting you down."

"You could never let me down."

"One of these days, you might decide it's not worth the struggle. You might decide that you want a guy who hasn't got so far to go, who hasn't got anything to prove. A guy like Neal."

She pulled her hand away from his and blinked her eyes angrily. "Don't ever say anything like that to me again. It sounds like something my mother would say, and you know how angry it makes me when she starts planning my life for me. "

"Maybe some of the things she says are right, Jade. A girl who looks like you deserves somebody with money and social status, somebody who could lay the world at your